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City Hopes to Expand Incubator

Representatives from the city, Flagship Enterprise Center and Anderson University hope a revamped partnership between them can change and expand the Anderson Business Incubator program.

Plans include selling the building — the former Anderson Police Department — that currently houses five ABI clients and moving those clients into empty retail space provided by landlords. The new arrangements will allow the city to receive needed funds from the sale of the building while maintaining the integrity of the ABI program, which offers subsidized rent and other business resources to startups.

“This is an opportunity for a public partnership to go to the private sector,” Mayor Kris Ockomon said. “It will benefit a lot of people. Particularly, it will benefit the city because our costs will be less, and it will put some money in the private sector’s pocket.”

Now, the city owns the ABI building at 700 Meridian St. Clients who set up their businesses there pay rent subsidized by the the city. With recent city budget concerns, however, the ABI’s future has been unclear, with city officials spending the last year trying to determine whether it could still be funded. Last month, the Anderson Redevelopment Commission learned that the city would decrease its funding of the ABI from $75,000 to $25,000.

“With the budget, we have downplayed getting new clients until we came up with a plan,” Flagship Executive Director DeWayne Landwehr said. “We’ve had to look for another plan, look for a way to run it with less money.”

For that, city and Flagship officials called on Terry Truitt, dean of AU’s Falls School of Business. Truitt developed the plan for the ABI that would keep it operational and allow landlords with empty space to find tenants.

“We have excess capacity all over town,” Truitt said. “The goal will be to expand the ABI. It’s not a building now, it’s a program.”

Truitt also plans to get AU business students involved in the revamped program, getting them to participate in internships and class projects with some of the ABI clients. Through the program, students will be exposed to government policy and watch real businesses grow from the ground up, Truitt said.

“It will help us not only encourage jobs and increase stability, for me this is a great chance for us to partner together because of our students.”

Truitt hopes the ABI program will encourage students to stay in the city after the graduate, possibly providing them with job opportunities. A growing number of Falls School of Business students want to start their own businesses when they graduate, he said.

“Who knows what could happen next?” he said. “We’re hoping to create jobs and, on my side, we’re hoping to create employees.”

In the meantime, the city’s Economic Development Department will work to sell the ABI building. A request for proposals was ordered at the Jan. 5 meeting of the Redevelopment Commission and will be due from parties interested in buying the building by 4 p.m. Feb. 2.

The buyer of the building could choose to use it to house ABI clients or for other retail purposes, such as clothing, equipment, food, personal, business recreation, private club or lodge, department store, storage or commercial parking, according to the RFP.

The 15,000-square-foot building offers a parking lot, six new furnaces and air conditioners, a roof installed in the past five years and newer windows, handicap lift and freight elevator, according to the RFP.

Money from the sale of the building will go into the city’s redevelopment fund and likely will be spent on the maintenance of former General Motors properties now owned by the city, Dawson said, a fund that has “always been lacking.”

If the five current ABI clients must move from the building, they will have opportunities to find other space downtown or in other parts of the city with comparable leasing rates, Landwehr said. Now, ABI clients are allowed to participate in the program for up to three years. Landwehr expects that if they find a retail space they like, they might stay there beyond their three years in the program.

“(Clients) are excited,” he said. “It’s going to be somewhat of a chore if they have to move, but the ABI is limited in the amount of dress-up you can do in those buildings.”

Ockomon said the newly formed relationships between the ABI clients and their new landlords could prove beneficial.

“If you get the right marriage between the right landlord and the right type of business, there could be some mentoring going on that’s unexpected,” he said.

ABI client Connie Combs said she is happy with the news plans for the ABI. Combs moved her business, The Mobile connieSeamstress, there in September 2008, and although she doesn’t know just where she’ll end up, she is excited about the opportunity.

“It’s still kind of up in the air,” she said. “We haven’t heard anything definite. They’re still behind the program, but they just need to locate us someplace else.

“They’re not just going to abandon us.”

Combs said her business has done well during its time in the ABI, but her ultimate goal has been to have her own storefront. The new program could give her an opportunity to do that.

“I think this is going to give me an opportunity,” she said. “They have been so nice to me from the very beginning and they’ve done everything they could do to make this go. The economy being what it is, I’m just glad to have a place to set up.”

Landwehr said he has had other startups interested in space in the ABI, but he’s had to put a hold on recruiting new clients until he knew the plans for the building.

“We didn’t want to put clients in a situation we weren’t sure about,” he said.

Ockomon said the budget crisis and concerns about the ABI’s future have turned into a beneficial solution.

“We’ve taken a situation we felt like was kind of declining and we’ve turned it into very much a positive,” he said. “Just when the chips are down, something wonderful happens.”

By Aleasha Sandley, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer